Deborah Kass and Comedy: From Belle Barth to Barbra

“Presenting herself—a woman and a lesbian—as a gay man vamping as a woman vamping as a man, Kass thoroughly muddles distinctions of gender and sexuality, and promulgates a fresh persona, flagrant and droll,” writes one critic about Deborah Kass. Indeed, her appropriationist strategy in her Warhol Project (1992-2000) was deeply performative and comedic at its core. She, not surprisingly, admires the great foundational Jewish women comedians: Belle Barth, Totie Fields and Joan Rivers. With the aid of clips from a video interview questioning Kass about comedy and the comedic, we will look freshly at her art and its relationship to the transgressive humor of stand-up comedy. Martha Rosler has said that as a New York Jew “a vaudevillian ‘shtick’ comes naturally to us as raconteurs.” How this comment relates to Kass and what it means for her subversive humor and cutting-edged painting practice will be problematized. We ask how does or can an interest in comedy itself, apart from broader questions of humor, inform her work. This talk will engage issues of gender, sexuality, irony and the “revolutionary power” of women’s laughter.